So we continue with the adventures of Dick Gray… I mean titans,
for this edition of Netflix Month 2
Origins
We see the fight from the end of the last episode from
Rachel’s perspective, Rachel is captured but Kori is not far behind them,
watching as the nuclear family load her into the car.
We flash back to 2 days earlier, where she finds the home of
Rachel Roth, the rather sordid scene that it is. She searches the room,
noticing the notable locks and abundance of crosses. She locates a secret
compartment in the mother’s bedroom with papers that confirm Rachel was adopted
from a missionary called St Paul’s. She leaves after assaulting some cops as we
see her in the present following the Nuclear Family.
They act like a sickeningly normal family as they stop at a
gas station, Kory rescues Rachel, adding another gruesome death to her count.
After the credits we see that Dawn is in the hospital, and we flash back to 15
years ago, with Dick Grayson having a talk with his social worker.
Good news, Bruce has decided to foster him, bad news, his
parents' death is being treated as murder by the police. Dick is taken to Wayne
Manor but at this point they hadn’t actually cast Bruce Wayne so don’t expect
to be seeing more than a few shadowy glimpses. We see Dick use his acrobatic
skills to escape the house.
Back in the Present, Hank is cold toward Dick, which I guess
is an improvement from outwardly hostile. Dick wows to get to the bottom of
this and as luck would have it he gets a call catching him up on Kory’s
activities and confirming that Rohrback is dead, I did warn you not to get to
attached to her, or really any part of Dick’s detective backstory.
Rachel can’t feel anything off Kory despite her empathic
abilities and honestly this entire exchange feels like they’re saying “I don’t
know” on loop, that’s much of this episode so far actually. We get it, no-one
knows anything, can we shut up and get to fixing that already? They’re on their
way to St Pauls.
They stop at a diner so Kory can beat up some punks
harassing the waitress. In Umbrella Academy, the choice of music is meant to be
ironic to juxtapose the often-extreme violence. Here it’s an empowerment anthem
because this show isn’t that clever.
We flash back to Dick talking with his social worker again,
he agrees to give Mr Wayne a shot, though of course it would help if we
ever actually see him out of costume. He explores the mansion, finding family
portraits and old classic cars. A Porsche in particular has his attention and
he takes it out for a spin, soon landing the attention of the police, not that
they can keep up with him on the straights.
In the present, Dick arrives at the gas station, seeing the
hole Kory burned into the wall. He sees the burnt corpse, completely
unrecognisable. He begins downloading the security footage, and transfers it to
his tablet, in full view of the police. He gains the number plate of the
vehicle and uses his tablet to track it to St Pauls.
St Pauls don’t hold many answers for Kory as she was
deliberately vague, only telling the Sister in charge that Rachel was in
danger. Rachel stayed at St Pauls for a while with her mother, which she
doesn’t remember because clearly there’s a rampant memory loss pandemic in the
DC Universe. Yes, I know, too soon…
Turns out they came here, and the Sister assumed it was a
domestic dispute, and gave them hospice. Rachel is given a room there but Kory
is disappointed not to find more answers. But she does find that the key she
found is for a locker down the road. Meanwhile the Nuclear Family come to a man
named Doctor Adamson who is not best impressed at their failure, as he’s a
bog-standard villain. I’ll save you most of the speech but long story short,
Trigon needs his daughter’s blessing to come into this world. He decides not to
kill them, instead considers giving them another father.
Kory finds another locker key in her locker, and Rachel
tells her she doesn’t know much about her father. In a mighty coincidence, as
Rachel begins playing in the arcade she bumps into Garfield Logan, it’s been
over 90 minutes since he last showed up, you’d almost think they’d forgotten
about him. The two hit it off right away as Dick arrives and immediately brings
the fun to an end.
Arguments ensue, Dick warns them that now Rachel is believed
to be her mother’s killer and Kory is wanted for multiple assaults. But Rachel
refuses to go anywhere without Kory and Kory believes Rachel is key to her
memories so there’s no splitting them up. Rachel has an outburst that smashes
nearby car windows and sets off alarms. She wants to head back to the Church
which they agree to, Gar comes out as they drive off and sees the damage.
Flashing back, Dick was eventually caught with whatever it
was he was doing and explains to the social worker he was out looking for his
parents' killer so he can kill them. Nothing says this show is serious like a lifting a
plotline from Batman Forever. Incidentally, it made more sense in that film
because he had something to go off of. Something made more sense in Batman
Forever, just let that sink in.
Dick returns to his room to find an envelope waiting for
him. Telling him that revenge won’t bring them back and that he can teach him
another way to deal with the pain. Dick has a heart to heart with Rachel,
telling her that whilst the pain and loss may be with her forever, she can
control it. He leaves to find Kory has taken his car.
Rachel meanwhile is given more comfort by the sister and as
soon as I hear the words “we shouldn’t have let you go” my spidey-sense begins
tingling about this particular church. She drugs her asleep with some hot
cocoa. Kory opens the storage locker, finding a lot of case notes and a video
journal. Apparently, she’d tracked down the church before, who told her the two
secured new identities through a Russian Mafia, somehow, and that’s why she was
meeting a contact in Vienna.
She also finds strange symbols which she can read. Rachel is
taken to a bedroom in the basement, somewhere where ‘he’ won’t find her. She’s
locked inside. Dick has managed to track Kory down, and sees the breadth of her
investigation. Meanwhile, Rachel’s demon-side continues to taunt her, wanting
her to let her in.
Dick and Kory’s investigation continues as Rachel continues
to resist, but ultimately succumbs. Dick and Kory leave the locker to see smoke
coming from the church. Rachel has escaped and runs for her life. Rachel is the
destroyer of worlds according to a prophecy.
This episode has its drawbacks, it’s very dull for the first
half but its second offers a bit more substance
Rating 6/10
Doom Patrol
Are you ready for a backdoor pilot? Too bad, because we’re
getting one anyway. Remember when a show had to already have had some clout
before it could do that? Good times.
Two Years Ago in the congo some kind of raging pandemic had
hit, oh the foresight. No-one seemed be getting better and the Docs are given
an evac order. Leaving the one survivor alone. One specific Doctor returns,
seeing him alive and injects him with something as the credits roll. Take
notes, that’s how long a pre-credits stinger should last.
Rachel runs into the woods and finds herself confronted by a
Green Tiger, who she sees transform back into Garfield, but of course we don’t
because that would be too expensive. Dick and Kory arrive at the crime scene
and no-one tries to arrest Kory. I mean, she’s not exactly subtle, she stands
out.
A pair of… oh come, you don’t have to be this obvious. Hur
de hur, we’re hunters and we love shootin animals #voetrfreud2021. They’ve
injured a deer and Gar uses his tiger form to scare them away. Rachel tries to
calm the deer down, and we hear that Gar has never bitten everyone, given that
everyone else on this show seems to have a body count, give it time.
The deer eventually dies from its injuries, or so we think,
as Gar and Rachel walk away, the deer’s injuries begin to heal themselves. They
arrive at the Doom Patrol HQ, and Beast Boy’s personal arcade he calls Nirvana.
OK, if you have all this here, why bother with the place you met Rachel, what
were you doing there?
Anyway, their fun is interrupted by the arrival of Robotman,
played by Brenden Frasier of all people. Rachel hides in a cupboard as Gar
tries to lie his way through the situation, apparently he isn’t supposed to
leave the house. Cliff was in an accident and the Chief managed to save his
brain and put it in a robot suit.
The Chief is the ‘greatest Doctor in the world’ who managed
to help many of them. Rachel explores and we the bandage-wrapped Larry aka Negative
Man in the kitchen. At least it’s not the Imagine Dragons Thunder he's playing, that’s
literal garbage. Apparently Chief isn’t home until tomorrow and Larry’s more
than happy to cook for her.
Dick and Kory head to the police station and just now Dick
remembers that maybe having Kory in tow when she’s a wanted felon is a bad look.
Gar goes up to check on Rita Farr (Elastigirl) who’s apparently not feeling
very well. And we see that they weren’t kidding about that either. I don’t
really know how to describe what I’m seeing but it’s clearly upsetting to Rita
as she spends her time watching her old films.
Dinner is certainly an interesting affair as Robotman can’t
eat so has to ask what everything tastes like, Rachel actually gets in his good
graces in this scene. Rita graces us with her presence as dishes herself a
large quantity of food as her condition requires. She begins to meltdown but
Rachel uses her empathic abilities: it seems Rita fell through a bridge into a
river, one of the wooden planks was unstable and broke beneath her, though we
find out later this has nothing to do with her origin, maybe it was one of her
films.
Either way it seems to help stabilise her, but things are
made more interesting when the Chief arrives. He’s curious about Rachel but
that can wait as he has a new patient, Shyleen Lao, aka Fever. Her history in
the comics is fairly brief. She was organising a protest, it turned violent and
she was doused in liquid nitrogen. Chief injects a serum into her which help
but her body begins reacting, drawing in any heat it can to stop her plummeting
body temperature. Rachel manages to calm her down using her empathic abilities
allowing the serum to take hold.
But even with that display, Chief is not happy at Garfield.
I don’t know if this was ever the original intent of Doom Patrol, but Chief has
always come off as a narcissistic sociopath in any comic I’ve read with him,
which I’ll freely admit isn’t many. He then begins to ask about Rachel.
Back with Dick and Kory, they go to see the hunters Rachel
and Gar encountered earlier. And if they want me to believe that Dick is
justified in his actions, this is the wrong way to go about it. They’re going
to introduce Jason Todd in the next episode and I don’t want to be wondering
what the difference is between them.
And just to make things better, Dick accuses him of touching
Rachel, and it turns out he has his own kid. It’s actually Kory that gets
answers by showing a little bit of empathy. Chief’s purpose is go beyond what
medical science is willing to do. Rita was exposed to a toxic gas that
destabilised her form, she spent decades in an asylum. Larry was exposed to
negative energy during a plane crash.
He offers the same help to Rachel. He wants to conduct some
test Rachel and see what makes her tick if you will. Dick and Kory arrive at
the house as Rachel is strapped down for the tests. Rachel changes her mind,
for some reason. Gar tries to help but Chief tranquilises him. This gets Rachel
mad enough to unleash her soul form again.
Dick and Kory enter the unlocked house, finding no-one until
they’re ambushed. Kory says she’ll take care of this as Dick goes to Rachel,
using all the lessons he’s learned over the episode which I haven’t bothered
with. It’s enough to calm her down and stop whatever it was she was doing. Gar
is given a backpack and told to go with them and leave him life. Chief’s back
was broken by the affair and he’ll be back in a wheelchair but rest assured
when we see him again, he’ll be a new man, literally, they recast him. Want to
find out what happens to them, check out the Doom Patrol series. I hear it’s
pretty good.
This is the best story of the series so far, its pacing is so
much better because it has an interesting story to tell within itself rather
than just being a drip-feed of plot progression for the ongoing narrative. It
still has a lot of the same problems the rest of the series had and it’s
obvious a lack of budget is going to be a recurring problem but I’ll take what
they’ve given me.
Though on a weirder note, no Mento? He’s not even in the
show
Rating 7.5/10
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